July 30, 2018

PERFORMANCES & CREATORS TO WATCH features reviewed dance pieces, dance-performances and performances, along with short biographies of associated choreographers, performers and other actors. It complements the Paris Performance Calendar's AGENDA & PERFORMERS headings. It is regularly updated.

PERFORMANCES

MY SOUL IS MY VISA • Marco Berrettini • 70 min • MC93 - Nouvelle salle • Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales, May 2018 • ΑMy soul is my Visa plays on the spontaneity of live interaction among performers – piano player and dancer – within a “collectively-created” choreography and music ranging from Erik Satie to Nina Simone. Marco Berrettini cites Heracleitus – “Everything flows” and James Brown, “… Give me the fever in a cold sweat …”. Berrettini comes to contemporary dance by way of 80s disco dancing and Pina Bausch (whose claim to fame is to make a body do what it can do, not what it should do). From this, deduce that Berrettini’s reference to “soul” in the title most likely refers to the Motown musical exploration of the body-mind mix and the resting state of consciousness in quantum physics. “Visa” could be that gold plastic card that opens the mall doors from Ulan Bator to Tierra del Fuego, but expect otherwise. Ω Performers 16 & 17 May 2018, Montreuil : Nathalie Broizat, Sébastien Chatellier, Ruth Childs, Caroline Breton, Samuel Pajand / Scenography & lighting: Bruno Faucher / Costumes : Olivier Mulin / Production: *Melk Prod.

July 28, 2018

In last week's post of Next Line, Please, contributor's were asked to write an abecedarian poem in 26 words that would recount the plot of a particular novel, book, or play. We thought this one might be challenging, but the Next Line, Please contributors filled the poetry caravan with enticingly good recapitulations.

Diana Ferraro’s “Hamlet” tells us a little something about betrayal, violence, and the essence of truth:

When David Shapiro blamed my ping-pong Victory on the distractions of what in a fit Of pique he called my flapping ostrich Gesticulations I ventured to remonstrate That in many of my life’s activities or even In most of them I was like a flapping ostrich, “And David,” I continued, “don’t expect me“To bury my head in the sand.” Oh reader,Do you recognize my irresistible reflex forThe comical riposte where the more drollCosmopolitan rejoinder of which John wasSuch a past master might be somethingI should strive to develop? On the island Of Hydra Leonard Cohen once said to me, “Sing your poems instead of reading them,“You will have a new career.” I tried butSuppressing my laughter proved impossibleCausing Leonard in a fit of pique to exclaim,“Take it seriously, Kenneth!” and I replied,“How can I take it seriously when I can’t sing?”

July 27, 2018

"He was from the shore. There was sand and ocean, horizon and sky, daytime and nighttime--the light, the dark, the tide, the stars, the boats, the sun, the mists, the gulls. There were the jetties, the piers, the boardwalk, the booming, silent, limitless sea. Where he grew up they had the Atlantic. You could touch with your toes where America began. They lived in a stucco bungalow two short streets from the edge of America. The house. The porch. The screens. The icebox. The tub. The linoleum. The broom. The pantry. The ants. The sofa. The radio. The garage. The outside shower with the slatted wooden floor Morty had built and the drain that always clogged. In summer, the salty sea breeze and the dazzling light; in September, the hurricanes; in January, the storms. They had January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December. And then January. And then again January, no end to the stockpile of Januaries, of Mays, of Marches. August, December, April--name a month, and they had it in spades. They'd had endlessness. He'd grown up on endlessness and his mother--in the beginning they were the same thing. His mother, his mother, his mother . . . and then there was his mother, his father, Grandma, Morty, and the Atlantic at the end of the street. The ocean, the beach, the first two streets in America, then the house, and in the house a mother who never stopped whistling until December 1944.

Our research shows the ideal reader for Jennifer L. Knox is a man, dressed like a woman, is over 40 but wider than a mile, 9 feet tall, all that, is a Camaro owner, parakeet aficionado, Michelob drinker, half-Canadian, half-sausage, half-cowboy hat, is bad at math and bad in bed but is very, very horny, is covered with crumbs, is both unwilling and unable to perform the functions on this card, watches at least 22 hours of TV a day, would “fuck your mother under a picture of you,” happily answers all telephone surveys, and reads poetry only if he’s going to be tested on this shit. Other favorite books of this ideal reader include Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet, and the one Bugs Bunny cartoon where he helps the little penguin go home.

July 26, 2018

At first he was Little J.A. in a Prospect of Flowers But he kept on doing it and by the end he was in The Library of America – two volumes, mind you. “Here a scarf flies, there an excited call is heard,” That’s his best line I believe, but “Attention, shoppers” Is also wonderful and there are so many good ones. Some might say that “mild effects are the result” Sums up his oeuvre but I certainly don’t agree And if I ever said that it was just to get his goat As the shadows lengthened and we were wondering If man is horrible, for instance, as he wrote in “These Lacustrine Cities.” Once I recalled to him His recommendation of years past that I read The poetry of Muriel Rukeyser and he replied, “Are you sure it was me?” with that sly grin and The hint of insinuation like old wine that has Almost turned to water except there’s something Still going on there, but what? Or is it just you?

July 25, 2018

Last week I mentioned that I often compare poets to dogs. I received a few emails asking me to elaborate. So I want to ask, Am I the only one who thinks this way? Should I teach a seminar on helping poets find their inner dog? There are, after all, just so many similarities between poets and dogs.

For starters, everyone is familiar with those social media fiends, yappy little dogs that want to become everyone’s FRIEND and that LIKE everything. And the equally enthusiastic large dogs that stick their noses in everyone’s crotch. (I’m not talking about the Me Too movement here. Crotch-sniffers come in both genders.) And the German Shepherds that, given the opportunity, bite fellow poets—I remember one such poet telling me he really enjoyed writing negative reviews. In contrast are the Cocker Spaniels, great family dogs—Ted Kooser, Stanley Kunitz, and Billy Collins are prime examples. It’s always safe to take a Cocker Spaniel poem to a yoga class or family gathering—no need to worry that they will wander into alarming territories. Unlike the Springer Spaniels that resemble Cockers but often roam and need obedience classes.

One of the more appealing breeds to my mind are the majestic Bernese Mountain Dogs that make me wish I lived in the Alps, or at least the Appalachians, or anywhere far away from po-biz and other such nonsense. I don’t think Sydney Lea or John Lane would mind being compared to a Bernese. And there are the tireless Border Collies whose work is beautiful to witness and who can herd other poets as if they were sheep. For this reason, they are known to organize events and conferences like the God-awful AWP. Examples: Kelli Russell Agodon, Grace Cavaleiri, Didi Menendez, and January Gil O’Neil. There are also the Papillons, or dogs from another planet—their large ears are clearly designed for hearing signals from outer space. Poets like Claire Bateman, Stephanie Strickland, Shivani Mehta, Charles Simic, and Harvey Hix might be Papillons. And the Jack Russells. I always fall in love with Jack Russells, those clever, surprising, and witty poets who are great entertainers and make me laugh. You never know what they are going to get into next. Poets like Jennifer Knox, Denise Duhamel, Amy Gerstler, James Tate, Nicole Santalucia, David Lehman, and Jan Beattie qualify as Jack Russells. I would be negligent if I didn’t mention the ever-present urban poodles, all dolled up, as if by Glamor Shots. Poodle-poets tend to be smart, or at least a lot smarter than they look, and they often win prizes. Also popular today are designer breeds like the Golden Doodle that blends the best aspects of poodles with retrievers. I love anything mixed with a retriever.

I adore retrievers. Just saying the word, I can almost see one in the meadow, one leg raised, nose to the air, every fiber of her being alert to any scent or sound or movement in the water or wind. In fact, I just read the book, Echolocation, by the poet, Sally Bliumis-Dunn, and I thought, What a sensitive and magical read! I also thought, What a retriever! In her poems, full of grief and beauty, the internal world is in perfect sync with the natural world.

I could go on and on about dogs, but instead, I will post the cover of this lovely book and close with two poems by Sally Bliumis-Dunn.

There was a day I mused to the class How making love with Queen Elizabeth Would be interesting – surely at Columbia I was the only professor who thusly mused And I often mused, as when I mused how Poets would be interested in the word ashtray But prose writers would be interested in all The different people who used the ashtray Or when I mused on Friday, February 7, 1964, As the Beatles first arrived on these shores That it would be interesting to be famous like The Beatles and meet beautiful Brit women And one of the students said, “Elizabeth again?” So I laughed and mused, “God save the queen.”

July 22, 2018

What did you think was going happen, anyway? Don’t say you were never warned! Old Herrick’s “Live here blitheful while ye may” gets the message Across, or how about this one: “The worms crawl in,"The worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on"Your snout.” It’s not like having tenure at Columbia, Where it’s almost impossible to get rid of you. In fact, You’ll get rid of yourself, the only question is when. That grumpus-wumpus Philip Larkin put it this way: “Most things never happen, this one will.” Well, okay, You get it. Uncle! Call off the dogs! “Though he slay me,"Yet I will honor him,” spake Job in the Book of Job So let’s go to the Cedar Bar. Except that’s closed. What about Max’s Kansas City? The West End?

For sheer cleverness it would be hard to compete with Steve Bellin-Oka’s “Poem in the Manner of the Muse as Real Estate Agent”:

This new sonnet’s amortization rate is unfavorable—by the time your closing couplet pays off, you’llhave needed a new polyethylene heating oil tank,two water heaters, and a full copper re-pipe job.And the loan inspector’s report notes that even thoughthe shiny iambic pentameter paneling in the octavelooks solid, underneath in the sestet the wall jointsare starting to fray like the hem of a well-worn skirt.Your volta creaks as it turns—there’s another costly repairon the horizon. May I speak frankly? You’re not younganymore. Down the street in your discarded draft drawerthere’s a better investment. It may look like a shithole now,but all it needs is a stanza wall knocked out to let the lightbreathe. Hardwood floors enjambed and buffed and shined.

Darren Lyons’s effort to construct a poem out of materials derived from the year of his birth came up with an intriguing, choppy, and visceral piece. Here is “1975 (to Rothko)”:

five years gone,something reached up and bit my mom,as if you entered the blood flow,as you painted, as you bled. Red.my sign is red.watergate does not bother me,you entered meas i left the womb.Dad has a scared left kneefrom Kent State, student-thrown concrete,from the day before the four.five years gone,the boat people flow.

The challenge for next week: to sum up a novel, movie, book, or play in a 26-word abecedarius. Usually an abecedarius consists of 26 words, the first beginning with “a,” the second with “b,” and so forth. For example, David Lehman's "Antigone":

July 19, 2018

Of all the pinball machines in all the zinc-bar cafes in Paris, and there were many, the one that I recall playing most often with my chums was Dipsy Doodle. The name didn't mean much to me then, but it was a good machine -- the kind of machine that you could play competitively. Years later I heard the 1940s song called "The Dipsy Doodle." The Tommy Dorsey band was the first to play it; the Andrews Sisters made it a hit; Ella Fitzgerald recorded it with the Chick Webb orchestra. It's a dance song of the period with a rhythm suggestive of "In the Mood."

Some ink has been spilled over the puzzlement that the lyrics for "The Dipsy Doodle" may arouse. What does "the dipsy doodle" mean? Many feel it is a meaningless phrase on the order of sha-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na, an expedient occasion for an uptempo dance. In 1982 Ronald Reagan characterized a political argument he opposed as "the real dipsy doodle," prompting William Safire to speculate that "dipsy" was shorthand for "dipsomania" (now more commonly known as alcoholism) and that "doodle" added both a nice alliterative touch and an allusion to the contortions of a body in motion, as when one is dancing or trying to elude a tackler in football. In discussing Reagan's use of the term, Safire reminded readers that "dipsy doodle" was slang for a curve ball in baseball and was used by Raymond Chandler in The High Window as a down-home way of saying trickery or chicanery.

My own feeling is that, in the song, "dipsy doodle" is code for the state of mind of one who is at risk of falling in love -- and that in its young and playful way the lyric illustrates the idea that the first time you fall in love is the first time anyone has ever fallen in love. In defense of my admittedly speculative theory, I will point out that "digga-do" served in the 1920s as slang for lovemaking.

Here are the lyrics (followed by Ella's recording). The song was written in 1937 by Larry Clinton. He wrote it for Tommy Dorsey who backed Larry when he embarked on his own career as a top bandleader. -- DL

The Dipsy Doodle's the thing to bewareThe Dipsy Doodle will get in your hairAnd if it gets you, it couldn't be worseThe things you say will come out in reverseLike "You love I and me love you"That's the way the Dipsy Doodle works

The Dipsy Doodle's easy to findYou know it's always in the back of your mindYou never know it until it's too lateAnd then you're in such a terrible stateLike "The moon jumped over the cow, hey diddle"That's the way the Dipsy Doodle works

Whenever you think you're crazyYou're just a victim of the Dipsy DoodleAh, but it's not your mind that's hazyIt's your tongue that's at fault, not your noodle

You better listen and try to be goodAnd try to do all the things that you shouldThe Dipsy Doodle will get you some day. .

"It's very difficult to criticize my French, since I speak perfectly." -- Kenneth Koch, in conversation

It’s very difficult for me to write this poem After I’ve been dead for eighteen years Or maybe even longer depending on when You’re reading it but it’s very difficult For me to know exactly when that might be Since keeping track of time is very difficult For the dead with one day much like another but Not writing this poem would also be very difficult Because I started writing poems at a young age And it’s one of the things I got used to without Ever getting completely used to it like making love Is something else I never exactly got used to Since it’s very difficult to make love perfectly Like I could speak French perfectly.

It’s very difficult to write about my future at this point Since I don’t have one but I can draw inspiration From John’s lines in Civilization and Its Discontents, “I could only gaze into the distance at my life like “A saint’s with each day distinct” and in fact each day Is so distinct that even long-forgotten remarks Flit into one’s consciousness like the randomness Of a hummingbird’s flight across a table set forA charming breakfast in the backyard of the parents Of a beautiful and brilliant girl you want to marry Despite a rather obvious age differential and suddenly you Hear yourself saying, “Rubens married Helene Fourment “When she was just sixteen and they even had five children.” Wait a minute, where was I?

You see, it’s very difficult to manage a train of thought when The tracking mechanisms of time and space are Removed but I was about to say that slapdash reminiscences Now crop up like bumblebees not entirely unwelcome But somewhat alarming all the same and in particular I had In mind the first year I taught writing at Columbia when Apropos of who knows what I observed to the startled class, “When you’re twenty you think you will never die but when “You’re forty you know you will.” Funilly enough (funnily enough!) I was only thirty-nine so I was kind of looking into the future Except not like when you meet a beautiful girl and you know you Will make love with her without knowing exactly when But more like you’re speaking French with her and she speaks Perfectly and then she uses a word you’ve still got to learn.

Everyone knows that stocks these days, especially US stocks, are overvalued. But picking a market top is no easy matter. David Aronson, former professor at Baruch College,now president of a research firm that develops methods to enhance stock market trading systems, says, "the process of topping out can take a really long period of time, evolving over a year or more." Aronson demonstrated his credentials as a two-armed economist when he told Mark Hulbert of the Wall Street Journal.that only time will tell whether the coming top will precede a major bear market or something less dire, something of merely "intermediate-term significance."(See The Myth of Stock-Market Tops," September 5, 2017, p. . R1).

Admirers of Sergio Leone's masterpiece Once Upon a Time in America know that the character named David Aaronson, played by Robert de Niro (top left), bears the nickname "Noodles" from the time he and his buddy Maxie were the most notable personalities of a gang of Jewish teenagers in New York's Lower East Side in the early decades of the twentieth century.

Noodles remains "overweight" on emerging-market equities. as well as overweight in the old-fashioned sense, as befits a man of his mature years who has done his share of losing, done what he had to do and now finds it all so amusing to think he did all that . "All that" includes knifing a vicious rival, for which act he serves time. He has fallen hopelessly in love with Deborah (played by Jennifer Connelly as a youth [top center] and by Elizabeth McGovern as a grown up [top right]). She is his one true love, yet, alas,he date rapes her in the back of a rented limousine. He has also smoked his share of opium with the song "Amapola" in his brain, cried in his sleep, carried on with Tuesday Weld, a decoy during a jewel heist, and teamed up with "Uncle" Maxie (James Woods) and buddies to smuggle booze during prohibition and run a fabulous speakeasy,

Thirty years have gone by in some remote upstate burg after his gang buddies are shot in one fatal last caper. During this time, and prior to mysterious letters that lead him to return to New York City and learn that he had been deceived and betrayed, David Aaronson has had the opportunity to make an independent study of stock market trends. In the book that made his academic reputation, Aaronson writes that "bottoms are easier to identify, in real time, than tops." When asked whether he had in mind either Jennifer Connelly or Elizabeth McGovern, Noodles just winked, whistling a few bars of Cole Porter's classic "You're the Top."

The take-away: Major bull market tops are a process, not an event. The long-term topping process may have begun without anyone taking note. Many people have shunned the market since the 2008-09 collapse. Only when they start buying stocks will we know for sure that the long-awaited end has come. Will there be a correction -- or a crash? How painful will it be? The jury is still out .Meanwhile when they ask me what the market will do tomorrow, I always say: it will go up and down. -- DL

July 17, 2018

On Monday the 16th of July, the New York Times ran an obituary for Les Lieber, who died last week at the age of 106. Here are four facts about Les Lieber:

(1) In 1965 he started Jazz at Noon, which lasted forty-five years as a great New York notion achieved with artistry and renewed with vigor and vibe on a weekly basis. Every Friday you could go to whichever club or tavern was hosting and you'd hear Les on his saxophone joining other gents who, like Les, held demanding jobs in medicine, finance, or other professions, but relished this one hour when they could honor their love of jazz. News of Jazz at Noon spread from mouth to mouth and a dedicated following followed. Dizzy Gillespie dropped in with his trumpet, and Buddy Rich visited to play drums.

(2) Les's main job was as a journalist, a sports journalist, whose profile of the great Yankee catcher Yogi Berra ran under the title "There's No Place Like Home Plate."

(3) Les, fluent in French, spent many a summer in St. Paul de Vence with his charming wife, Edie, a beauty in the Ava Gardner manner, where they befriended the painters and poets who made this hillside town in the Alpes Maritimes a destination worth a journey.

(4) A veteran of the air force in World War II, Les had a sharp wit and was adept at delivering a humorous comment or aside with a straight face in the Bogart manner.

Jazz aficionado Jamie Katz, Les's stepson, has spoken movingly about his "talented, lovable stepdad, who spoke six languages, pitched a no-hitter in college, landed in Normandy, recorded with Django Reinhardt in Paris in 1945, and wrote hundreds of imaginative, beautifully turned, whimsical magazine articles."

When I met Les, he was twenty five years younger than I am now, which sounds like a math problem but is just a way of saying that he was a longtime friend who was exemplary in demonstrating that possibly the best way to appreciate great music -- better even than the joy of listening -- is to play it. This is a lesson that applies as much to poetry as to jazz. -- DL

<<<Les Lieber, who for more than 45 years ran Jazz at Noon, a fabled New York institution where talented amateur players got together every week to stretch their skills and to perform alongside top-flight professionals, died on July 10 on Fire Island, N.Y. He was 106.

His stepson Jamie Katz confirmed the death.

Mr. Lieber had already had a substantial career as a publicist and journalist when, in September 1965, he organized the first Jazz at Noon, partly to give himself a chance to play his alto saxophone and penny whistle for an audience. It was on a Monday at lunch hour at Chuck’s Composite, a restaurant on East 53rd Street.

“I was dying on the vine as a musician,” he told The New York Times in 1975, recalling the origin of the sessions. “I hadn’t had my sax out of its case in eight years. I felt there must be others like me who would love to play but couldn’t get a rhythm section together without disrupting their families.”

The experiment soon had a following, as players who might have once had thoughts of a professional career but had become doctors, lawyers or accountants pulled instruments out of closets. Soon Mr. Lieber added to the allure by recruiting professionals, for a modest fee, to drop in as guest stars. >>>

If I could push a button and write A new Kenneth Koch poem I would push a button and write That I could push a button so We are hitchhiking again near Vallauris and the sky is cloudy But who cares since we’re young And plain silly and when rain falls We keep on skylarking as they say In the army until we knock it off As they also say in the army and We make love and write poems And if we get old I push the button Again a hundred thousand times.